2010 Music Showcase: 1 night, 50+ bands, 5 bucks this Saturday on Wash. Ave.

Jumbling Towers, The Kanetown City Rips (self-released) 
After a promising debut album and a hit-or-miss EP, it was anyone's guess how Jumbling Towers' long-awaited album, The Kanetown City Rips, would turn out. As it turns out, Kanetown was worth the wait. Its track "Black Courage," rumbles and shuffles with dirty electric piano and synthetic brass fanfare, and acts as an overture to the underwater funk grooves and busted hip-hop beats that populate the rest of the half-hour program. Leader Joe DeBoer now sings more than he yelps, but the album is still plenty unsettling. And that's a good thing. (CS)
9:30 p.m., Hair of the Dog

Magnolia Summer, The Current Moves EP/The Slip That Leads Into the Fall EP (Undertow) 
In sorting through the castaways and cutouts from the band's last full-length, Lines From the Frame, Magnolia Summer's Chris Grabau chose to curate two five-song digital EPs. Taken together, they provide a director's cut of the last LP, showing both the robust guitar-rock and the more atmospheric, inventive sides of the group. The Current Moves' standout, "The High Road," features motorik rhythms and vulnerable vocals, while "Rangeline" (from The Slip) sounds like a Nebraska B-side played by the Album Leaf. (CS)
3 p.m., Main Outdoor Stage

Phaseone, Thanks But No Thanks (self-released) 
In the past few years, Phaseone (a.k.a. DJ and producer Andrew Jernigan) has found some blog love from esteemed sites such as Pitchfork, which gave praise to his genre-blurring mixtapes. These mixes are pretty fly, but Phaseone's own creations are self-made worlds of drum-machine beats, analog synths and window-shaking bass bombs. The instrumental album Thanks But No Thanks is either the soundtrack to a particularly nightmarish video game or the backing tracks to a retro-leaning hip-hop album. (CS) Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three, Riverboat Soul (Free Dirt)
Imagine the wildest, smokiest, whiskey-soaked gambling boat cruising the Mississippi River, circa 1930. Now complete the image by picturing Pokey LaFarge onstage in a straw hat, strumming a banjo backed by his band, the South City Three. As the title of his record suggests, LaFarge's music is an audacious exaltation of bygone eras of blues, bluegrass, rockabilly and rock & roll, replete with kazoo solos, washboard percussion and wicked finger-pickin' guitar licks. (KH) Rockwell Knuckles, Choose Your Own Adventure (self-released)
If the goal of every musician is to expand sonically and conceptually with each record they release, Rockwell Knuckles is winning. Each one of his three (outstanding) albums has been better than the last. His latest, Choose Your Own Adventure, has him rhyming over thunderous beats from top-notch local producers such as Stoney Rock (a.k.a. Black Spade), Trifeckta and Tech Supreme. His topics range from immortality and existentialism to drunken hook-ups and life on the streets of the north side. (KH)
7 p.m., Shiver Vodka Bar & Champagne Lounge

So Many Dynamos, The Loud Wars (Vagrant)
Though it was given a tragic 5.5 by a cantankerous Pitchfork reviewer, The Loud Wars is So Many Dynamos' most polished release to date. Produced by Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie fame, Wars shows that the foursome has grown up a little bit: The album is studded with great tracks such as "New Bones," which is an impeccable earworm that's anthemic in the style of old-school Dynamos track "Search Party." Still, the band maintains the frenetic pace and depressive insouciance for which it's known. And Wars revisits familiar sonic territory: call-and-response bridges, Clayton Kunstel's creative destruction of his drum kit and mathed out madness. This time around, however, there's enough sonic trickery to hopefully dispel those pesky Dismemberment Plan comparisons. (DB)

Son Volt, American Central Dust (Rounder)
With the soft murmur of Jay Farrar's vocals, the rip and cry of slide guitar, and military-precision percussion, Son Volt marches through a modern dust bowl with American Central Dust. The album continues the band's history of relevant social criticism ("When the Wheels Don't Move") and forgotten history ("Sultana"), while turning an absurd urban legend into a soulful piano-driven dirge seeped in humanity ("Cocaine and Ashes"). (Wheeler) Theodore, Hold You Like a Lover (Moon Jaw)
On February 9 Moon Jaw Records (an Absolutely Kosher/Misra Records imprint) released the third album from the alt-folk/country quartet Theodore, Hold You Like a Lover. Justin Kinkel-Schuster's scratchy, crooning vocals passionately lament the shadowy tales of men and their tribulations. These affecting lyrics tumble across a dusty landscape of brass, upright bass, drums and guitar, while standout track, "Death's Hand," swirls with noise and aches with what it means to be human. (LD)
9:45 p.m., Over/Under Bar & Grill Patio

The Trip Daddys, Roll On! (Daddytime Records) 
Even with a new rhythm section, the Trip Daddys still sound like the Trip Daddys — mainly because of Craig Straubinger's strength of vision and his red-hot guitar playing. Contrary to popular belief, though, the Daddys have always been more than a mere rockabilly band, something which shines through on Roll On! Straubinger and Co. power through tunes that take cues from ramped-up country and reverb-heavy, twangy rock & roll. As the band's cover of the Greg Kihn Band's "The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)" says, they just don't write 'em like that anymore. (CS)